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Deborah Naybor: Developing global communities

Founder, Both Your Hands Alden, New York, U.S.

“Deb Naybor is the founder and executive director of Both Your Hands, a non-profit group that helps caring, global communities become self-sufficient. Deb’s passion is helping communities in impoverished areas create opportunities through economic, educational, infrastructure and health-development programs. Both Your Hands works with adults and children on more than 60 projects in 14 countries, involving as little as a $50 microloan to $5,000 in school improvements. Both Your Hands has provided Christmas gifts of snowsuits for the children of battered women in Arctic Alaska, built the first free secondary school in Malawi, and provided traditional drum-making lessons to Ugandan orphans. Deb has a hectic life, she owns a land-surveying business, is working toward a Ph.D. in global gender studies and is remodeling her 1940s log home using environmentally responsible methods and materials—and she believes if she can find time to help the poor, anyone can. Says Naybor: ‘I work 60 hours a week, go to school at night and save the world on weekends.’”